Commercial licensing
UHT is free for personal and private use, with or without an account. Commercial use requires a Commercial licence, and the rule is simpler than most people expect:
If the tournament is connected to making money — directly or indirectly — you need a Commercial licence, regardless of how many players are involved.
The number of players is not the test. A four-handed game in a bar that sells drinks to the players is commercial; a forty-player home game where the players share the cost of refreshments is not.
The binding text is the Terms of Service, section 4 ("Commercial Usage and Licensing"), available in the app under Legal. Where this page and the Terms differ, the Terms govern.
The definition
The Terms describe commercial usage as "any activity where the service is used in a manner that directly or indirectly generates revenue", and give five categories.
Direct revenue — charging fees for tournament entries, or collecting registration fees.
Indirect revenue — hosting events where revenue comes from ancillary sources: bars, poker leagues, or venues earning income from food, beverages or services.
Professional venues — operating in a casino or professional poker venue.
Business services — providing tournament services as part of a business.
Corporate events — hosting tournaments at company or corporate events.
For-profit organizations — running for-profit card clubs or poker clubs.
The word doing the work is indirectly. A venue does not have to charge for the poker to be earning from it.
Worked examples
Private use — no licence needed
A home game. Six friends, £10 each, all of it paid out as prizes. Nobody profits from running it. Free plan is fine.
A family tournament at Christmas. No money at all, or a token buy-in that goes back out as prizes. Private use.
A student society game. Members play, the pot is paid out, the society takes nothing. Private — but see the next section if the society sells drinks at the event.
Practising with the app. Building configurations and designs, running the timer against nobody. Private use.
Commercial use — licence required
A pub tournament. The pub charges nothing for the poker, but sells drinks to twenty players over four hours. That is indirect revenue — the tournament exists to bring people through the door. Commercial.
A poker league. Members pay a season fee or a per-event entry that funds anything other than the prize pool. Direct revenue. Commercial.
A charity event with an entry fee. The money goes to charity, but a fee is being charged for entry, and the venue and organizers are operating a revenue-generating event. Commercial. (Being a good cause does not change the licensing position; if in doubt, ask.)
A corporate away-day tournament. A company runs poker as part of an employee event. Explicitly named in the Terms. Commercial.
Any casino or card room. A professional venue, whatever the buy-in. Commercial.
Providing tournaments as a service. You are hired to run somebody's poker night. Business services. Commercial.
Charging a rake. If you use UHT's rake feature, you are by definition charging a fee — that is why the feature requires the licence in the first place.
High tournament volume
There is one further case worth calling out, because it catches people who do not think of themselves as commercial: running tournaments at high volume.
A group that plays once a month is a home game. An operation running events several times a week, with a standing player base and a recognisable brand, has stopped being a private game whatever its stated finances — the scale itself indicates an ongoing operation rather than a social one.
If you are running frequent, regular, publicised events, treat yourself as commercial and take the licence. It also gets you the features that volume makes necessary: unlimited players, unlimited connected displays, rake and reports.
One licence per location
A Commercial licence is issued for one specific geographic location. A company operating several venues needs a separate licence for each.
This has a practical consequence: a Commercial licensee running multiple licensed locations may keep a separate account for each, provided every account is covered by its own valid licence. That is the one sanctioned exception to the one-account rule.
Account sharing
Sharing a UHT account with other individuals is not permitted on any plan.
There is one exception, and it is specific: an organization operating under a Commercial licence may share account use within that organization, at the registered location. So three staff at one licensed club can work from the club's account; three friends in three cities cannot split one Supporter subscription.
The Terms are direct about the consequences of ignoring this: licence revocation without refund, and the account may be banned or reset to the free tier.
What the licence gets you
Beyond permission, a Commercial licence unlocks the features a commercial operation actually needs:
- Unlimited players and unlimited connected displays
- Rake — charging a tournament fee
- Tournament reports — the PDF record with profitability
- Maximum cloud storage and tournaments retained indefinitely
- Multi-location use, with a separate licence per location
See Pricing for the cost.
Not sure?
The honest test is one question: does anybody make money because this tournament is happening? If the answer involves a bar, a door fee, a venue, an employer or a business, the answer is yes.
If your case genuinely is not clear, ask before the event rather than after. Mail contact@ultimate-holdem-timer.com and describe the situation — the venue, who pays what, and where the money goes. That is a much better outcome than discovering the position later.
Next
- Pricing — plan costs and limits
- Collecting rake — charging a tournament fee
- Tournament reports — the commercial record